Blog: Day by day

Leaving work yesterday evening, I bumped into a new advertising billboard ad for Mc Donald’s. Or was it? At first sight, before even knowing that it represented a picto of French fries, I had a feeling that it was McDonald’s. If you look at this ad carefully though, you’ll notice there is no brand, no name, no address… not many clues about what it is about.

These days find me particularly sensitive to connected, cross-channels and cross-devices experiences. I have worked quite a lot on that kind of subjects for clients lately: today Brands can’t have a website, mobile applications and websites, ads, etc. independent as before. Same person uses them all, and all touch-points should be part of a unified experience. Even non-digital touch-points.

I was recently surprised by a 2-times ad on TV for Peugeot. The first part of the ad is very short. You can hear a music and a feminine voice invites you to open Shazam. For those of you who don’t use it, Shazam is an application that recognizes melodies and helps you find the name and author of a music piece as you hear it. I jumped on my favorite Wiko smartphone right on time before the second part of the ad.

The interesting point of it is that Shazam nearly instantly recognizes the background music, and drives you to a specific page on the app, dedicated to the ad! There, you are invited to discover the song and the product (a car.) I love this idea because it created a direct link between the Brand and me, from an impersonal TV message to my very own mobile phone. I also like that Shazam is a very modern app, that I would not have thought of for this use: I was more receptive and less defiant.

As a Senior UX Consultant at blue-infinity, I had the chance to be published in ICT Magazine (November 2013 issue) with my contribution to a dossier about Web Accessibility. The dossier gave the context of accessibility (history, legal) and aimed to give wider opportunities with most recent trends and evolutions (like responsive web design for example.) I was in charge of the background article, on the legal and history context in France and Switzerland.

Why do users abandon shopping carts? This very relevant ad for Google Analytics shows some evidence in an entertaining way. And I like it! Just wonder if your website doesn’t ask too many questions, or complicated data to recover. Everybody has to gain from a simpler buying process.

Adviso, a brilliant web strategy company, for which I have worked during the last years, has recently made the news. In the magazine L’Actualité, the company was ranked as one the 20 fastest growing companies in Quebec, Canada. And the magazine Profit Canada ranked them among the fastest growing companies in the country. Well done: congratulations to all the team and all the best! And it is quite clear that their success does not provide them from having good fun (see pictures below).

A study was recently published in the Psychological Review about efficiency at work. Dr. K. Anders Ericcson studied the way musicians trained, and how long they trained, and compared their focus to their efficiency. The conclusion is that 80% of our outputs come from 20% of our inputs. And that working focused for 4 hours is more efficient than working unfocused for 8 hours. Otherwise said, this study advises us to be more focused for short periods in the day, and allow ourselves to rest: answer less phone calls, check emails less frequently and leave work early. Want to improve your work? Be ready to leave office early!